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Leaving Woodrow, Nadine and my driver behind, I go to the headquarters ofThe Royal Observer. I announce myself at the front desk and am taken up to the seventh floor, at the end of a long grey corridor where Mitchell’s desk sits amongst dozens of others. He waits for me with his fingers laced and resting on hisdesk, but I notice the security guards creeping from the corners of the room, waiting.
“I’m sorry, Mr Fletcher-Lowe,” Mitchell says when I drag a chair in front of his desk and sit down facing him. “It’s too late to pull the article.”
“I’m not here because of the article.”
His eyes widen underneath his glasses. He glances up, and the security guards pause, hovering where they are. The office floor is full of the sounds of phones ringing and computers whirring, but otherwise it’s deathly quiet. I’m sure everyone is desperate to hear this conversation, but they’re going to be left disappointed.
Because I’ve not come here to fight.
I’ve come here to supplicate.
“Why are you here, Mr Fletcher-Lowe?” Mitchell asks, taking off his glasses in a tired gesture.
“I want to know how much you paid her.”
Mitchell doesn’t make the faux pas of asking me who I’m talking about. He leans back in his chair, studying me for a moment. His eyes have that same expression I remember when I met him for the interview, that obstinate melancholy.
“Is this really what you’re concerned about right now?” he asks, voice low and almost gentle.
I sit back, crossing one ankle over my knee, and stare straight into his eyes. “What is it Shakespeare wrote?Things without remedy should be without regard?”
Mitchell gives me a rueful half-smile. “An apt reference since this quote refers to the killing of a king.”
“I’m no king, and you’ve not killed me. But you’ve dealt a true blow, David, and I’ll bear the wound as I must. I just want to know how much you paid her to help you inflict it.”
Mitchell sighs. “She didn’t want money.”
His words sink inside me as easily and painfully as knives stabbing into my flesh. Of course, Willow Lynch didn’t destroyme for money. She let me hunt her like an animal for money, she made me pay her for getting my dick hard. She stole from me with reckless, relentless abandon, selling my things with impunity.
Money is simple, easy to understand.
Willow has always been anything but.
“What did she want?” I ask.
Mitchell answers slowly, as though he’s carefully selecting each word before saying it.
“It was money I initially offered her. My research led me to believe she might have debt problems; I hoped to capitalise on them. But it wasn’t the money she asked for when she finally came to me. She wanted a way out of the country.”
The knife sinks deeper. I have a feeling of visceral pain, like being gutted alive.
Willow didn’t sell me out for wealth; she did it for freedom.
The realisation hits me with a force that’s almost physical. I use every scrap of my self-control and willpower to not keel over from the force of the blow.
I stole her revenge just so I could give it to her as a gift, so she gave herself the gift of her own freedom, bought and paid for with my destruction.
My head swims. I have to rest my head in my hand just to catch a hold of myself. She left. She really fuckingleft. All of this, everything she’s done, everything that’s happened. It was never about hurting me; it was about escaping a life she never chose, never wanted.
My fingers slide from my face, and I open my eyes, blinking away the blurriness. The security guards, sensing the weight of what’s happening, inch closer, ready to intervene. But I don’t care about them. I don’t care about the impending article or the fallout from the exposé. None of it matters.
All that matters is that Willow is beyond my reach, beyond the borders of the world I control.
I stand up unsteadily, the chair scraping against the floor.
“Where is she?”
Mitchell shakes his head, a hint of sympathy in his eyes. “I don’t know, Mr. Fletcher-Lowe. She wanted a clean slate, a new beginning. She didn’t want anyone to follow. Presumably you least of all.”
